


Son of the Sea

by deathwailart



Series: The Holy Sea [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Gen, Living Myths, Mythology - Freeform, Pirates, Pregnancy, Sailing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-21
Updated: 2014-08-21
Packaged: 2018-02-14 02:59:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2175561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You came screaming into this world," his mother would tell him when he stood at her side to watch and learn as was and still is custom, the smell of the sea and the cry of the gulls all around him. "The storm went quiet, the sea calmed themselves because a new son was born to them who called out his hello louder than a storm hag. The sea is your home."</p><p>Or Felix Bonaventura, captain and Son of the Sea who reminds all men and women that they too came from the sea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Son of the Sea

"You came screaming into this world," his mother would tell him when he stood at her side to watch and learn as was and still is custom, the smell of the sea and the cry of the gulls all around him. "The storm went quiet, the sea calmed themselves because a new son was born to them who called out his hello louder than a storm hag. The sea is your home." The sea is his home. They all come from the sea and Felix Bonaventura is no different; the sea is in the blood of every man and woman whether they remember it or not and in the womb, where they all swim before they ever walk. Nine long months in his mother's belly as she traversed the seas, a captain loving and fearsome by turns. Born at sea with the waves beneath the deck as the ship rolled under their command, born in a storm and the sea would either reclaim them as she strained and sweated or it would be a sign as the ship was lashed, masts creaking ominously under the strain, thunder booming overhead and the lightning hitting the water, causing it roil and hiss. His mother knew the way a sailor knew when to weigh anchor, where to head for to catch the winds, how to read the spray when it hit the bow of the ship. His mother knew and so did he and so the words were repeated each day and each night, through each storm and every calm.  
  
"The sea is my home."  
  
He is Felix Bonaventura and he sailed across half the world before he could even be called a man. Tall and strong and broad of shoulder from a young age with brown skin and black hair, tight curls, thick but soft, a neatly trimmed beard at his chin once he's old enough and a moustache, just as neat and waxed. Big dark eyes that are friendly but sharp, wrinkles at the corners from a young age from laughter and squinting against the glare of the hot sun, the blast of the wind, the salt-spray of the sea. His mouth is prone to smiling because what better life is there than this, to be out on the open sea, to be free beneath the sky and above the waves as dolphins leap alongside them and whales show them safe passage as they keep them safe from those who'd dare to launch harpoons at them. He has the hands of a sailor, rough with calluses from taking his turn at every duty from tying knots, scrubbing decks and pots, sewing sails and clambering up and down the rigging. _The only way you're fit to be aboard a ship my son_ , she would always tell him when she pulled him close, stroking his curls, _is when you know how the ship should feel. How can you hope to be a captain when you can't understand the dangers the crew face, their rightful complaints and their proud smiles when they sing a shanty to get everyone through the day or when we make it through a storm?_ His mother, small and fierce and by twelve he was as tall as she was, all that height coming from his father who sailed aboard another ship. His mother who was a mother to the whole crew as she needed to be. _A captain wears many hats_ , she liked to say when she told him who he'd be helping from one day to the next. _Some days I am their older sister who has gone through it all before them, other days I am the mother gentle and stern by turns, I can be their dearest friend. But I can be the enemy too, the taskmaster, the one that has them cowering and grumbling. It's how you have to be. You have to be like the sea to sail upon it, do you understand Felix?_  
  
Felix is a man grown now, wearing a bandana to keep the sweat from his eyes as he commands a crew, each and every soul aboard devout souls, afraid and yet unafraid of the sea. Respectful. Mindful. His moustache and beard always neatly trimmed and he smells like the colognes he picks up as they sail the seas of Terradeos to spread the word, to remind all souls of where they came from. Felix who only goes so far as the docks with legs that don't know how to walk on land, legs used to helping him walk a straight line no matter how much the deck moves beneath him. It's how he learned to walk and on land he probably looks like a drunk anywhere except Castileos where they know that his gait marks him as a man who loves the sea with all he has. He dresses in fabrics that come from foreign lands, light armour for a sailor to keep his balance, a deep blue leather cuirass decorated with a mermaid over his heart, her arms to encircle him, a trident across his back in the crook of her elbow. Pauldrons of white tipped in glinting silver, cresting his shoulders like a wave. Sleeves of blue and silver damask, waves and kelp and flashing scales, plain dark trousers and tall boots that come up to his thighs. He is like the sea made flesh as all Sons should be. He who might sink beneath to the depths to the mercourt should the sea come for him, he who might and has rise triumphant during a storm or after a battle when he's overboard. He's not always flash as a swordtail, there are times when he dresses in loose breeches and shorter boots, when he wears brown and black and the flashest thing is his long blue coat trimmed in white and silver but a captain should look like a captain and a Son should look like the sea, beautiful and entrancing and deadly all at once. Armed always, rapiers at his belt, a brace of flintlocks and a short musket at his belt, knives hidden within his boots and his coat and in the loose folds of his sleeves.  
  
Sharks smile. Sharks have teeth. Sharks with their bad reputations who so long as you're not an idiot won't bite.  
  
Small wonder all sailors not from Castileos call the Sons the pirate preachers, a name they laugh at but accept with good grace until it becomes an insult and a sneer, until they snarl it in taverns or on the docks when they stop for repairs. It hurts to have to spill blood with someone who is a brother and doesn't remember, someone who has forgotten that they swam before they ever walked, that once they all came from the sea. Especially when it's other sailors; how can they not remember? How can they curse the sea and all within it?  
  
How can anyone be on the sea without love and awe and reverence within their heart?  
  
The ship he sails, the ship he captains, is the ship he was born and raised on. Spent stints on other ships as is custom, time with his father who was a navigator and who taught him the stars, the old stories about them, the one of the mermaid and the moon but this ship is home. The ship knows him as well as he knows the ship; the room he was born in, the railings he clutched as he learned to walk, the mast he would shimmy up to sit in the crow's nest. It's where he learned to duel, to fire a pistol, to mend a sail. He would sit at his mother's side late at night and she'd go through what he'd learned, why it was important to learn it and he knew. He always knew. Sometimes he didn't think he did but he'd open his mouth and the words would spill out and his mother would smile that satisfied smile and because they were sitting – she complained, he remembers, just how tall he was, the crick in her neck from squinting up at him – she would tug him over, let him rest his cheek on her shoulder, her long braids cool against his skin. She's got a different ship now, smaller. _Old lady ship, got some aches and pains, doesn't go too fast but she'll get there. Time for relaxing now my boy._ They cross paths sometimes and they extend gangplanks between the ships when they can, anchored side by side and sometimes she hits him when she doesn't think he's taking care of her ship the way he should, if the decks aren't gleaming or if the ship sounds as though she needs to head to a harbour for repairs, like the time the mizzen mast had a crack and they had to nurse her all the way help but mostly she just smiles, leans against the railings and breathes deeply, remembering when her hands could curl around the wheel without pain, when she had the ship carving through the waves in her prime. She's got her letter of marque as a formality but he knows she doesn't go chasing after other ships to plunder them, nowadays she follows the whales, the old ones with barnacles clustered along their bodies and the scars from battles with squid and likely kraken when it comes to the largest ones.  
  
Just because Felix has never seen a kraken doesn't mean they don't exist.  
  
Felix sails upon the seas with a letter of marque tucked in the inside of his coat, pressed close to his heart, the seal of Her Grace Above the Waves protection extended, permission granted, his payment coming in ensuring that Castileos flourishes and remains strong. He leads the prayer aboard the ship each morning where they break their fast with bread and fish dipped in salt like the folk at home do each and every morning, the same offering he extends when someone comes to his cabin on business because that is the way of it; they might share a ship but it's his ship and within his cabin they're not just crew, they're guests and any captain worth their salt extends courtesy and protection towards them, no matter what they might have to say. He's to be respected but he's seen too many captains from other lands who rule their ships like tyrants and believe that fear makes men work better; the sea is home and no one should fear their home.  
  
He sails routes they know so well all across Terradeos, north to Albas where the seas are choked with ice and they make slow and painful progress, following the lines carved by whales with long jutting horns, seals with thick fur watching them from the ice floes, tusked walruses doing battle on what beach remains to them. He sails south to Ebeos where the fields are said to stretch for miles with blooming flowers that when viewed through a telescope make the eye swim, butterflies and birds that venture far out to sea. Out to the east where Corundus and Estene sit alongside one another heavy with forests they dispute over and mines that run deep and wide and provide a bounty of jewels. South and around the crumbling empire of Zimevur that once waged war against Castileos in a bid to usurp power only to find their ships smashed against the great stone walls they raised from the depths, the ships of Sons and all others who could and would sail to defend the realm meeting them until Zimevur was forced to retreat. They never linger there and Zimevur's ships are the least poached and plundered when all their sailors have a flinty hungry look to them, when there are more beggars on their docks with palms outstretched than Felix has ever seen in all his life. Life on the waves is a treacherous one and believing as they do, _knowing_ as they do, they give no quarter should they be attacked, they will fight to the last man but will spare all those they can. They are after goods, not lives and often now there are flags and signals where someone will turn over a cut so they can sail on with no damage or loss of life. Ships from Zimevur are the only ones who will attack outright.  
  
Survivors are rare, they fight to the death with frenzy and fire in their eyes.  
  
He preaches, like they all do, reminds them that they came from the sea, as they all did, that the sea will always provide, because it will. He is often asked to leave through clenched teeth with muskets pointed at him, rapiers and swords drawn and he looks to those hollow hungry eyes and raises his hands in entreaty, making his way back to his ship but never turning his back. They run heavy into Zimevur with the bounty of the sea that they've caught on the way, fish and salt, nets and line and bolts of cloth for sail because the water is good for fishing but there are precious few ships and he knows the whispers that it's wrong for them to fish because that's what the Castilean heretics and dogs do. When they leave they make precious little but there's always a soul or two cowering and pleading to take them away, please, do whatever you want. Sometimes they pay to go anywhere else and they spirit them away from the guards but women and children have free board.  
  
He even gives up his own bed for the children and tells them wild stories of his adventures, smiling when they giggle and their cheeks go from sunken to full and round and easily pinched.  
  
Many of them leave before he takes a real account of them, slipping off at the first port. Others thank him profusely, clutching his hand in theirs before they scurry out to a new land. One or two have stayed and have been baptised as Sons and daughters, finding a place amongst the existing crew where they learn the old songs and how to fish, praising the sea for delivering them from their old life. They're some of the hardest workers and the ones who'll sing the praises of the sea and the mercourt and all the life beneath the waves the loudest after him and it warms his heart to see them happy and to know that he had a part in it. He teaches them to wield a blade and a pistol and how to use anything on the ship as a weapon same as he teaches the young hands who come aboard from Castileos to live their lives upon the waves and to remind everyone that they came from the sea, that in them is salt and brine and the blood of the merfolk, that it is the sea who will reclaim them when the time comes. _And you will be as we were once_ , he tells them when they ask, the words said at all funerals when they return the bodies to the water, _the mercourt shall take your hand to lead you gladly home._ When they weep, they weep as the sea does, giving a part of themselves. And then they raise up their voices in song and don their brightest clothes, drinking and dancing into the night because they are home, they have gone home and no one can begrudge a soul that.  
  
He's been a captain three years when a Bride requests to travel with him and his crew, Neria Castell and he is lost. She is two years younger than he, a new Bride, the biggest darkest eyes he has ever seen, long legs and smooth brown skin, thick glossy curls that shine in the sun, the fullest lips curved into a smile. She laughs a lot, bright and loud, head thrown back so the long line of her throat is exposed, her curls bouncing and dancing. She has wit sharper than a blade and when they stop at ports where people don't understand the Brides or any courtesan (that's not the word they use, they use hard and awful words, spit them out, sneering and curling their lip) he watches her charm them and leave before they realised just how deeply she has insulted them. She is with all who will have her because she is a Bride of the sea who gives her embrace and the embrace of the sea and to join with anyone when both are willing often leaves the body satisfied and both smiling but with a Bride it is something else. He feels lighter. He feels washed clean. He feels reborn. She is with him more than any others, not because he is captain but because she knows him to be devout and when her belly swells she knows the child is his and he is lost. He is lost and he gives her a ring, a mermaid clutching a pearl, silver on white and it is all he can give her without either of them having to give up their path. They belong to the sea as does the child and he cannot ask her to be other than she is.  
  
There is a daughter in time, born on land, laid in a cradle carved like a shell that he does not see because he does not sleep on the shore but Neria brings their daughter though he will never be her father the way another man would be, the way his father was. But he is the sea and Neria is a Bride and so he'll always be her father. Sometimes Neria sleeps aboard the ship in his cabin, in his bed, Araceli nestled between them and he will close his eyes and picture a life of them, sailing the seas but it won't be, might never be and he will simply be happy that he has a daughter and that he will always have a friendship with Neria. That Araceli sleeps soundly when she sleeps on the water is a blessing and the crew like to say that the ship wanted to be part of it all, that it's the reason Araceli will sleep soundly even when the colic had her howling before she was brought on board, is because she's the ship made flesh.  
  
It's a silly thing but he thinks about it as he watches daughter grow and tells everyone on the docks to watch over her and asks an old friend Marjani to teach her how to fight, bringing back a lost fox cub as a friend for his little girl when she suddenly starts to shoot up, long before he's able to take her out to sea. He thinks about how he was born on his ship and how he has never spent a night on shore, of how Neria is a Bride who offers the embrace of the sea and the story Neria would tell him over and over as she stroked his hair when he spoke to her belly and to Araceli slumbering beneath her heart, swimming before she ever walked and in the same cabin he was born in. Maybe the crew aren't wrong after all.  
  
 _The seas knew a new Son was born to them with me_ , he thinks, always. _The sea is my home_ , he remembers, always.

**Author's Note:**

> There is an accompanying piece to this written about Neria, the Bride of the sea, that I'll hopefully have finished and posted fairly soon that references the end events of this story and another one about Araceli after that.


End file.
